


Silence

by princey_pie



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Childhood Abuse, Crying, Mental Breakdown, Self-Hatred, Yelling
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-29
Updated: 2018-04-29
Packaged: 2019-04-29 22:44:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 891
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14482812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/princey_pie/pseuds/princey_pie
Summary: Lance, the most talkactive person, in the world is at a loss for words. It doesn't go well.





	Silence

Lance was great at comebacks. He knew that he wasn’t the smartest or strongest of the team, but words were his weapon of choice, maybe a gun couldn’t be bad either, but mostly words. So he threw around little jokes like candy on carnival, no matter the occasion. Most of the time his team smiled, sometimes even laughed, so he didn’t care about the times when they didn’t and just gave him strange looks. He just loved making them happy so much that his stomach felt light and fuzzy.

Even the constant bickering with Keith had this effect. It was good for both of them, pushing each other to the edge, it made the other boy less quiet and made himself stop thinking about things he would like to forget.

At least that was what Lance had thought, that was what he had believed. It was one morning before training when he realized that maybe he was wrong. Lance was, for once, early, only with Shiro and Keith already in the training room. They waited for the others to arrive so Lance did what he could do best: he talked. Manly, he just teased Keith, only because the boy’s dark eyes were even darker than usual and he just wanted to see them sparkle like they did little time ago when they first met.

But there wasn’t any reaction, no sparkle, nothing. No comments back, just Keith standing there. Lance felt his pulse rise, stress began to kick in. Now he suspected that something was off but simply couldn’t put a finger on it. So he continued talking, not even hearing his own words. He just wanted the silence to be gone.

He didn’t know what exactly he said, but suddenly Keith’s face grimaced, his lips doing that absolutely horrible, little switch of disgust. It was only there for a second and then vanished, followed by an exasperated sigh.   
But Lance saw it. He wasn’t that stupid after all. So Lance clamped his mouth shut. He literally felt his heart drop into his stomach and put out the joyful, fuzzy feeling.

Keith looked at him in mild surprise. “I didn’t think that you would shut up so easily this time”, Keith said into the sudden silence. 

“This time?”, echoed through Lance’s head, “What makes it different than all the other ones?” Quickly followed by: “What if there isn’t any difference? What if he does that face every single time? What if everyone feels like that?” On a good day, Lance would shake it off, smile and go on but this wasn’t a good day. He hadn’t slept all night, the nightmarish memories didn’t let him and now his tired brain was in turbo mode. No, it was a particularly bad day, one of many in the last couple weeks. He felt like throwing up.

“I know you’re not doing this for the sake of being a pain in the ass, well not all of it, but sometimes it’s just too much”, Keith went on.   
Lance heard his heart beating in his ears and had to concentrate very hard to listen to Keith through it. “Sometimes”, the boy now added with more emphasis, “you just make me so angry that I could strangle you!” 

The “And it’s your fault” couldn’t have been more obvious if it was written in the air between them. Lance could see how Keith clenched his fists at his sides while he said that and it wasn’t that hard to figure out what he was imaging at that moment.

With that Lance tired out mind raced back to another time and place when he was younger and another voice screamed similar words at him. “It’s your own fault for always getting on my nerves! If you weren’t such an annoyance, I wouldn’t need to punish you!” his father’s voice barked in his memory. He still felt that big hands around his throat and his fists on his stomach.

Lance didn’t realize that he was shaking until Shiro’s concerned “Lance you ok?” reached his ears. He couldn’t answer, how could he when everything he said just made people miserable? How could he ever thought that they laughed at his jokes other reason than that they had to because without him Voltron would be incomplete? How could he ever think that someone wanted him? By now it took all his willpower to not start crying and collapse right on the spot.

As from a great distance, he heard Keith saying: “Come on Shiro, he’s fine. Just because for the first time he gets criticism doesn’t mean that he’s suddenly made out of sugar. Even you have to admit that some of his jokes are off key.” 

Lance didn’t think that he could feel any worse but Shiro’s careful nod somehow managed that. As he could feel his breath getting stuck in his throat, he did what he always had done when he was out of words. He ran. 

He rushed through the door just in time to run by a very startled Hunk and surprised Pidge who were about to enter the training center. Lance didn’t stop for a second because he felt like when he did, he would shatter into little pieces. So he ran in search of a safe place to led the tears flow without anyone watching.


End file.
